The problem of synthesis between the individual and the group, man and society, the one and the many, may be solved by the application of the thomist social principle of self-sufficiency. We may state it in terms of the relation between the land and the city.

Against the many thomist enthusiasts who are also land enthusiasts it is sometimes pointed out that St. Thomas himself had no love for agriculture and regarded it as tending towards the work of the beast. Troeltsch has written in this respect: ‘In contrast to the inclination of modern Catholicism towards the rural population and its specific Ethos, it is solely the city that St. Thomas takes into account. In his view man is naturally a town dweller, and he regards a rural life only as the result of misfortune or of want ‘(Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, II, p. 318). The rude tiller of the soil degenerates through continual contact with the lesser creation, animals and the soil; he is to be pitied much in the same way as the modern ‘thomist ‘often pities the factory worker.

There is surely some truth in the assertion that those who cultivate the land lack the human delicacy of mind and soul that is to be found in the town dweller. The rustic may often be soil-sodden and unresponsive. The land and the things that grow and live on the land do not necessarily humanise; they do not inevitably of their nature tend to deepen the understanding and quicken the perception of the labourer. Experience often shows the contrary, the slow yokel more at home with his animals than with his fellows.